Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)

ITEP's Research Priorities

Boston Globe: The Hidden Tax Power of Undocumented Immigrants

August 5, 2024

A common argument among anti-immigrant politicians and advocates is that noncitizens who are in the United States illegally exploit government benefits and constitute a financial burden on the country. That claim is largely inaccurate and misleading. The latest evidence was provided this week by policy analysts and researchers at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. They found that undocumented immigrants in the United States paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, averaging $8,889 per person.

USA Today: Report: Targeted for Deportation by Trump, Undocumented Immigrants Pay Billions in Taxes

August 1, 2024

Florida is among a half-dozen states which each collect more than $1 billion in taxes from undocumented immigrants – a flow of public money likely to disappear under Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, a new report shows.

Newsweek: Undocumented Immigrants’ Payments Into Social Security Detailed in Report

August 1, 2024

New analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) found that undocumented residents paid £25.7 billion into Social Security funds and $6 billion into Medicare in 2022; both programs that they are not entitled to use. In total, undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion, or roughly $9,000 per person, in taxes in 2022.

Florida Policy Institute: Florida Should Welcome Immigrants

August 1, 2024

New research confirms that immigrants without a documented status still contribute economically, despite most not being eligible for any public services or benefits. Many immigrants without a documented status pay taxes — primarily via sales and excise taxes on purchases.[1] The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s (ITEP’s) latest report details the state and local taxes immigrants without a documented status contribute throughout the United States. Nationwide, ITEP finds that for every 1 million undocumented immigrant residents, revenue for public services increases by $8.9 billion.

Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice: How Hawaiʻi’s Hardworking Undocumented Immigrants Support Our Economy and Communities

August 1, 2024

Undocumented immigrants work hard in Hawaiʻi and play a vital role in our economy, boosting both our general excise and individual income tax revenue. This is despite the fact that it is more difficult for them to file taxes than for other Hawaiʻi residents. A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) lifts up the significant tax contributions that these immigrants make to our federal, state and local governments through the taxes they pay each year.

Immigration Research Initiative: People Who Are Undocumented: Occupations, Taxes Paid, and Long-Term Economic Benefits

July 30, 2024

As a July 2024 report from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows, people who are undocumented paid $97 billion in taxes in 2022. A total of $34 billion comes from payroll taxes to cover programs that exclude people who are undocumented from getting benefits: $25.6 billion paid to Social Security, $6.4 billion to Medicare, and, through contributions of their employers, $1.8 billion to unemployment insurance (which is a joint federal and state program). In other words, workers who are undocumented have wages withheld or employers are required to pay for programs that benefit other Americans, but which…

McClatchy DC: Undocumented Immigrants in California Are Paying Billions in Taxes. Here’s How Much.

July 30, 2024

Amid pledges for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants by presidential candidate Donald Trump, a new study has highlighted the increasingly positive economic effects of this community. The report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington-based progressive research group, found undocumented immigrants nationwide paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes in 2022. About $37.3 billion was spent on state and local taxes, and the rest went to federal taxes.

Quartz: ‘Trump Trade’ Is Back in Focus

July 16, 2024

The world’s financial markets are growing increasingly open to the likelihood that former President Donald Trump will make his way to a second term in the White House. All it took was outperforming President Joe Biden on a debate stage and surviving an assassination attempt.

Route 50: States, Cities Consider ‘Mansion Taxes’ to Fund Affordable Housing

July 15, 2024

States and cities have been throwing darts at the wall, trying to find dedicated funding to tackle affordable housing needs. Nationwide, tens of millions of families are struggling amid a housing shortage with rent and housing costs. Home prices are up about 60% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. And about a quarter of renters—some 12 million households—spend more than half their income on housing, which is far above the recommended 30%. To support affordable housing development and other initiatives in the rapidly growing Denver area, Mayor Mike Johnston on Monday unveiled a proposed new tax that would add 0.5%…

Nonprofit Quarterly: Can Taxes Reduce Inequality? What a Study of State and Local Taxes Tells Us

July 11, 2024

Who pays? Along with its companion question of “who benefits,” “who pays” has long been a central concern of both politics and economics. Earlier this year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) published Who Pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, its seventh study on the topic since 1996 and its first since 2018.

The 19th News: Republicans Want to Kill the Dept. of Ed and Privatize Education. Billionaires Are Helping Them.

July 10, 2024

In the fall, the Department of Education will mark 45 years since its inception, but that anniversary could be its last if Donald Trump gets his way. The federal agency is one of several he’s vowed to slash if reelected president.

Education Week: A State Considers a Future in Which Schools Can’t Rely on Property Taxes

July 10, 2024

What would a world without property taxes look like? In every state, revenue from property taxes is one of the biggest sources of K-12 school funding. But that could change soon as efforts ramp up in a handful of states to abandon property taxes altogether, or at least as a funding source for schools.

Connecticut Mirror: Could CT Fight Homelessness With a ‘Mansion Tax’? Yes, Report Says

July 3, 2024

State government could raise as much as $180 million annually to combat homelessness or address other social needs by boosting its tax on the sale of high-value houses, according to a recent report from two Washington fiscal think tanks.

The Volcker Alliance: Benefit or Burden

July 3, 2024

The issue paper addresses how US states hand out massive tax breaks every year to advance policy goals, such as aiding low-income families, spurring business investment and job creation, or mirroring the federal tax code. Known broadly as tax expenditures, these exemptions, credits, abatements, and other measures reduce state revenues by an estimated $1 trillion a year, almost three times their 2021 total state expenditures on education. Such tax expenditures, which often suffer from lax government oversight, may be leaving states short on revenue at time when the effects of climate change and the cost of deferred maintenance means that…

The Globalist: Will American Monetocracy Ever Come to an End?

July 3, 2024

It used to be that the United States prided itself on being a meritocracy. No more. It is increasingly a country with a cult of money and rule by moneyed elites. Not so much an oligarchy as a monetocracy.

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Tax the Wealthy and Reject Austerity for a More Just and Thriving Democracy

July 1, 2024 • By Amy Hanauer

Tax the Wealthy and Reject Austerity for a More Just and Thriving Democracy

Two of the last five presidents won office over the objection of the majority of the people; California, with 65 times more people, has the same voting power in the U.S Senate as Wyoming; and the U.S. Supreme Court just permitted South Carolina lawmakers to dilute Black votes in drawing districts. These obvious flaws undermine our claim to be a strong democracy. One less appreciated but similarly undemocratic trend is our extreme inequality that supercharges the power and wealth of corporations and the uber-rich, weakens what the public sector can deliver, and often feeds on itself.

New York Times: Newsom Uses Annual State Address to Confront Republicans Across the Nation

June 27, 2024

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, whose liberal state has been hammered by Republicans for months as a hellscape of homelessness, crime and high taxes, used his annual State of the State address on Tuesday to slam “conservatives and delusional California bashers” and defend “the California way of life.”

U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education, and Pensions: By the Wealthy, for the Wealthy: The Coordinated Attacks on Public Education in the United States

June 26, 2024

Public education is the cornerstone of opportunity in the United States. No matter who they are, where they live, or how much money their parents make, every child in this nation has a fundamental right to a public education. But in America today, the public education system—one of the cornerstones of democracy—is under attack.

Americans for Tax Fairness: Engine of Inequality: A Flood of Corporate Profits Is Enriching Wealthy Shareholders Through Stock Buybacks and Dividends, At The Expense of Workers and The Public

June 26, 2024

All but a handful of 280 large, profitable corporations spent more money making their wealthy shareholders richer through dividends and stock buybacks than they paid in federal income taxes in the five years after the enactment of the Trump-GOP tax law, according to a new analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness. And it wasn’t even close: altogether the stockholder payouts outstripped tax payments by 7-to-1, $4.4 trillion vs. $608 billion. This heavy bias towards shareholder payments for wealthy investors over tax payments for public services exacerbates economic inequality and promotes political instability, as increasingly frustrated American workers struggle to get by while…

Sacramento Bee: Governor Gavin Newsom Claims California Is Not a ‘High-Tax State.’ Is He Correct?

June 26, 2024

“Here’s the truth Republicans never tell you: California is not a high tax state,” Gov. Gavin Newsom declared Tuesday in his taped State of the State address.

Education Week: Some Districts Charge for School Bus Rides—If They Offer Transportation at All

June 26, 2024

A small but notable share of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts charge fees for some or all of their students to ride the bus each day—if they provide transportation at all. States vary on the degree to which they require schools to offer bus service to all students who want it. They also differ widely on how much money they provide to schools to cover the growing costs of transportation.

New York Times: Democrats’ Dream of a Wealth Tax Is Alive. For Now.

June 21, 2024

For years, liberal Democrats have agitated for the United States to tax wealth, not just income, as a way to ensure that rich Americans who derive wealth from real estate, stocks, bonds and other assets were paying more in taxes. On Thursday, that dream survived a Supreme Court scare, but just barely.

Forbes: Supreme Court Refuses to Upend the Tax Code in Ruling on Unrealized Gains

June 21, 2024

The Supreme Court declined to overturn a tax policy Thursday that critics warned could have had broad implications on federal tax policy and the U.S. economy, ruling against a couple who claimed they should not have been taxed on money they invested but hadn't made a profit on.

The Hamilton Project: The Austere US Safety Net for Poor, Non-Elderly Adults Who Are Not Raising Children and Do Not Receive Disability Benefits

June 20, 2024

The U.S. safety net has grown significantly stronger for children and elderly adults over the past half century. However, the story is starkly different for non-elderly adults who are not raising children and do not receive Supplemental Security Income disability benefits or Social Security benefits, Robert Greenstein argues in his Hamilton Project paper. In 2017, this group numbered nearly 106 million people, or nearly 33 percent of the U.S. noninstitutionalized population.

Arkansas Advocates for Children & Families: The Definition of Regressive

June 20, 2024

Today the Legislature, in a special session called by the Governor, begins discussion of Senate Bill 1. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, this bill will eliminate at least $450 million in tax revenue every year from general revenue. This revenue is essential for services important to all Arkansans, such as education and health services. What’s more, this tax giveaway prevents strategic investment in our state to help all Arkansans thrive. We deserve investment from our elected officials, not a race to the bottom.